


Smoke

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Castiel and Bees, Character Study, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sussex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok. I am NOT stepping away from "Time and Memory," for those of you who are following it. This, though, was short, fit into a patch of the day that opened up, and is a direct offshoot of finally catching up with Supernatural, after years of ignornace and oblivion. </p><p>It grew out of Castiel's fascination with bees...and Sherlock's known ACD canon retirement to raise bees in Sussex. Somehow there were things about hives, and humans, and caring, and not-caring, and logic, and alienation of these two characters that seemed to want to have a discussion. This is where it ended up. (shrug) It was interesting. I may go here again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke

“It is all quite confusing,” the angel said, waving the smoker along the sides of the hives, finding the cracks and ventilation spaces. He focused particularly along the edge of the removable top panel. “They so seldom stop to simply admire the beauty of what the Father provided.”

“Yeah. Well. People are like that,” Sherlock said, working over his own hive. He kept the smoker at the ready, jetting puffs over the hive as he extracted the full frames from the hive body and replaced them with empty new frames, charged with wax, ready for the bees to build new honey comb and fill. “People are, on the whole, given to seeing without observing.”

The angel’s brow furrowed, but he nodded. He pried the lid off the hive and looked down inside. He had already forgotten his smoker. He put out a hand and let the bees land. They crept over his skin, and spangled the tawny dun of his trench coat. “Humans. So few would think twice if I were to crush these. They would not mourn the beauty lost. At best they might be grateful, thinking I had ‘saved’ them from the workers’ stings. They do not understand that they are as bees are: no more. No less. Beautiful and complex and precious and…free.”

Sherlock leaned back and studied the angel. He found his company…soothing. The corner of his mouth twitched up, as he considered their peculiar friendship. Castiel reminded him of Mycroft. Powerful, dangerous, dispassionate but loving in a paradoxical mix that defied logical analysis. The elder, the stronger—and, yet, like Mycroft, oddly vulnerable and alone. Even more confusing, he often made Sherlock feel that he was the elder—the big brother to the bewildered angel from “one narrative universe to the left.”

“If you’re not careful you’ll get stung,” he pointed out. “Use your smoker.”

“I have already been stung,” Castiel said. “It was intriguingly painful. My knuckle is now swelling.” All this was said with calm, if not exactly happy fascination. “It is not as painful as hell fire. Or smiting.”

“Probably just as well,” Sherlock said, “or they’d be keeping us in hives rather than the other way around. Assuming they bothered, and didn’t just wipe us out.”

Castiel considered. “That would be a tragedy. I most concede that humans are more observant and aware of the beauty of bees than bees are of humans.”

“We have our moments,” Sherlock said.

He was older than he’d been back in the London days of Baker Street and wild hunts for arch-villains and bloody criminals in the haunts of the city. John was married, now—settled at last, damn his eyes. “The end of an era,” as Mrs. Hudson had once said. Not that Sherlock truly begrudged him his joy. Only…it seemed to highlight all the shifts that had occurred over the past decade, bringing Sherlock himself to rest, at last, in Sussex, on the farm, with the bees….

And the one lonely, bewildered angel who came calling from a different place, a different time—a different story.

“Here,” Sherlock said, gently, and took the lid and the smoker from Castiel. He drifted smoke over the angel’s hand and arm, quickly brushing bees away and back into the hive. “Let me handle this. You watch.”

“I meant to help.” The words were, as so often, layered with meanings—and memories, and regrets, and biting, burning confusion and grief.

“You care too much—and you let it leak,” Sherlock said, pointedly. “Sometimes you’d help more if you’d feel a bit less.”

“I had to _learn_ to feel,” Castiel protested, annoyed. “I worked hard to understand ‘feeling.’ It was not part of my original parameters.”

“If I understand correctly, you did feel—just in rather constrained ways, and about rather constrained subjects,” Sherlock said, proceeding to disassemble the hive, smoking efficiently as he went, then slipping more frames from the hive bodies. “You loved the Father.”

“I worshipped and adored the Father. I was obedient to him. I was loyal,” Castiel corrected. “It is not the same.”

Sherlock, who came rather reluctantly to love—and who might, if pushed, be willing to concede “worship and adore” in a rather metaphoric sense if applied to his very few lovers—grimaced. “Better off getting past that, I will admit. Your friends taught you that much.”

“They taught me that worship and adoration and obedience are of little value without understanding and free choice.” Castiel found a bee still caught under the wide decorative strap at the wrist-cuff of his coat. He drew it delicately free, and set it on the tip of his finger—and smiled with a child’s radiance when it flew free.  Then smiled somewhat less when it darted straight at Sherlock and attempted to get past the gauze of the beekeeper’s mask to sting him. “They also taught me the tragedy of human nature—that humans would rather fight than negotiate.”

“It requires less thought,” Sherlock said. “Tiresome, but true. Here—I’m done. Help me seal this last hive up and load the frames in the wheelbarrow. We can go extract the honey, then.”

The honey extractor was a homely, hand-cranked model that spun like a salad spinner. Sherlock scraped the caps off the cells of the honeycomb with a broad knife, slid the frames into their slots, put the lid on, attached the crank, and cranked like mad. Inside the container centrifugal force spun the honey out of the comb, flinging it onto the sides of the container, where it dripped down and pooled.

When he was done, he slipped a bottle underneath the spigot and opened the tap. Amber honey oozed out, shining in the sun, golden-orange and seductively slow. Castiel watched it pour out.

“Ectoplasm is of a similar consistency,” he said. “Also the blood of Leviathans.”

Sherlock’s world had been spared both substances. He had heard Castiel’s tales, though. “Less pleasant,” he pointed out. “Also less useful. Our honey will taste quite pleasant on toast in the morning.”

“The bees’ honey.”

“Not anymore,” Sherlock said, voice dry.

“I used to think the Father wanted praise and loyalty—the honey he took from the Hive of his creation,” Castiel said, eyes distant. He put out a finger, caught the stream of honey for a second, before pulling his finger back. He studied the golden syrup. “Then he left us. Apparently our honey wasn’t sweet enough.”

“Or your metaphor was inexact and his needs were other than you believed.” Sherlock scowled. “I much prefer this narrative universe, Castiel. But I will admit, whether in your universe or mine, I find the ‘Father’s’ retreat from his creation more admirable than not. I do not require my hives worship or adore. Merely that they live well and produce enough honey for their own use and a bit over for mine. Beyond that, they are free to be bees—and considerably more interesting and less labor-inducing because they are so, with no intervention needed on my part.”

“If they were ill, you would care for them. If they were dying—you would save them or put them out of their pain.”

Sherlock shrugged. “For my own convenience and conscience.” He studied the angel. “You overwork your metaphors. Not to mention your morbid fascination with deity.” He leaned over, and took Castiel’s finger in his mouth, licking the honey away, suckling gently.

When he let the angel’s finger go, the two stood, still and quiet.

“The honey bottle is about to overflow,” Castiel said, at last.

“Then change it out and put in another—then cap it off.”

The angel complied, obediently.

Neither mentioned Sherlock’s bee-stung lips pursed tight around Castiel’s finger.

Neither did they discuss later, when Sherlock carded gold and jet bees from Castiel’s dark hair as they sat together in the twilight, watching the applewood logs burn down in the fieldstone fireplace, and the smoke rise up to an uncaring heaven. The bees stung Sherlock’s fingers. But that’s the risk if you keep bees—or angels. Sometimes it hurts, just enough to add dimension to the sweetness of the honey.


End file.
